Ecommerce Case Studies - How You Can Use Them for Your Own Marketing Strategy - Omnisend
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5
Ecommerce
Case Studies
& How You Can Use Them
for Your Own Marketing Strategy
Table of Contents
5
How Snatcher Online
Made $120K+ with Cart
Recovery Automation
10
How Harper Liz Boutique
Used Welcome Emails to
Make $50K+
15
How Organic Aromas
Boosted Newsletter
Signups by 150%
20
How Net-A-Porter
Built an Online Luxury
Empire
24
How Mainline Menswear
Used SMS to Boost Traffic
for Their Winter Sale
Introduction
The ecommerce world is an exciting but often difficult area to be in.
There’s a lot of opportunities in the growing market, but there is also more competition
constantly arising. These are not just the behemoths like Amazon and Best Buy, but also
the smaller niche-specific competitors you’re having to deal with every day.
You need to be one step ahead of all your competitors, meaning you’ll need to learn the
best tips and strategies from successful companies. One of the best ways to do that is to
learn from the specific examples of other ecommerce stores.
Which is exactly what we’re going to show you today. In this ebook, we’ll be looking at
5 amazing case studies from ecommerce stores that have achieved some significant
results.
Specifically, we’ll look at:
• How Snatcher Online used Omnisend’s cart recovery automation
workflow alone to get $120,000 in automated sales
• How Harper Liz Boutique set up a series of automated welcome
emails - and earned $50,000 on autopilot
• How Organic Aromas increased their subscribers by 150% - by
spending only 1 hour and no money
• How Net-A-Porter built an online luxury empire with omnichannel
marketing
• How Mainline Menswear used separate channels to increase
traffic and sales for their Winter Sale
With this information, you’ll be able to apply these lessons to your own store and see just how
successful you can be in a short amount of time.
#1 Snatcher Online
5
How Snatcher Online Made $120K+
with Cart Recovery Automation
Overview of Snatcher Online
Snatcher Online is an ecommerce retailer based in South Africa that strives to provide
its customers with the best online shopping experience along with excellent customer
service. It offers a wide variety of products—everything from pet accessories to health &
beauty, electronics, and more.
It all started as a pet project by founder Dirk van Greuning, who wanted to see if his online
business could become a viable source of income so that he can quit his construction job.
Initially, Snatcher used suppliers to dropship orders. But this didn’t offer his customers a
quality experience. “We lost out on a lot of potential new products as all our suppliers were
not able to fulfill the dropship function for us.”
That meant that if Snatcher wanted to sell more products, they’d have to stock inventory.
In the second year, Dirk decided to really put his weight behind the store and take Snatcher
to the next level. “I took a leap of faith by signing a lease agreement for a new warehouse,
along with Customer Support,” he says.
That’s when Snatcher’s business really started to take off, and he was ready to take on the
world of ecommerce.
Snatcher Online
founder Dirk
van Greuning
standing
alongside his
wife. He was able
to earn more than
$120,000 using
cart recovery
automation alone.
6
Snatcher’s challenge
One of the most important things for Dirk and Snatcher was to make sure that they treat
their customers well and keep them coming back.
We definitely try our best to treat our customers well, to the best
of our ability, and thereby create loyal customers. We believe that
in such a competitive ecommerce industry, success can only be
created by your loyal customers returning.
But Snatcher Online faced a retention challenge for how to convert one-time buyers into
loyal clients.
Various experiments with email marketing platforms like Mailigen proved unusuccessful.
“Mailigen has no Shopify integration which results in no automation—no Cart recovery,
Welcome Message and Customer Reactivation, just to name a few,” he says.
That’s when he was browsing the App Store and found Omnisend. Not only did he find the
feature capabilities attractive, but he also saw the great reviews which showed that the
platform was effective and didn’t require a lot of set up.
It was also an added bonus that Omnisend easily integrates with Shopify stores.
“That made the move from our previous platform easy since most of our contacts were
already on this platform.”
He then started looking at the automation features and decided to really boost his
customer retention.
The Omnisend Solution
While Dirk uses various automation workflows like Customer Reactivation and Welcome
Campaigns, he found that the cart abandonment features have been his most powerful
weapon.
Our biggest revenue generator is definitely our cart recovery
campaigns. This is what we were missing in our previous email
tool, and the payoffs have been amazing so far. We’ve been able
to generate more than $120,000 in less than a year with just this
one feature.
7
In order to get back abandoned carts and abandoned checkouts, Dirk first set up a simple
automation workflow:
His email was also pretty straightforward. The short-and-sweet subject line (“Still
shopping?”) and to-the-point email really appealed to his shoppers.
If you noticed, Dirk also decided to stay on brand
by changing the colors and re-wording the CTAs
from “Buy now” to “Snatch It.”
8 “We decided to go with Omnisend’s default layout with a few changes, just to see what would work and how we could improve it. But we immediately saw great results with the campaign. On our first try, we were able to get a 50% open rate and 19.8% click rate. I was completely blown away by the results.” “Actually, I kind of kicked myself when I think about how much sales we could’ve gotten back had we started with cart recovery sooner.” Moving forward When Dirk saw the results that Snatcher was able to achieve with Cart Recovery, he de- cided to set up more automation workflows. “In total, compared to our regular campaign sales, automation workflows have increased our revenue by 74%. It’s not just been an amazing increase, but also pretty easy because it’s automation—you don’t have to do anything. You just set it up and that’s it. It makes money for you.” Dirk also sees automation workflows as giving Snatcher Online an edge over their com- petitors. When talking about the future of Snatcher, Dirk is excited by the new challenges and les- sons he’ll learn. “There is still a lot we’re learning every day and also a lot that we need to improve to be where we want to be. But discovering these challenges and then finding the solutions is part of the journey.”
#2 Harper Liz Boutique
10
How Harper Liz Boutique Used
Welcome Emails to Make $50K+
Overview of Harper Liz Boutique
Harper Liz Boutique is an online boutique with a mission to bring stylish and affordable
clothes to parents around the world for their kids. The boutique offers a collection of hand
selected items for girls, from newborns to 7-year-olds.
Harper Liz started when founder Christina Buchanan struggled to find styles for her own
kids in local stores and shopping malls. Most of the options in the local market was not
surprising, nor was it particularly unique or interesting.
From the start, Harper Liz has aimed to deliver the highest quality and design apparel
at prices families can afford and feel good about. By directly working with designers
in multiple countries, the boutique managed to deliver its promised message and the
business started booming.
The store is also very successful with its customers: it has more than 130,000 followers
on Instagram, and nearly 300,000 on Facebook. Now that the business has taken off,
they’ve been able to dedicate themselves to it completely. “We’ve both been able to leave
our full time positions and focus solely on our ecommerce business from home, and it has
been the best decision we ever made,” she says.
But Harper Liz wasn’t always so successful.
Harper Liz focuses on clothing for girls aged 0 to 7.
Here are some of their best products:11
Harper Liz’s challenge
In early 2017, Christina wanted to increase her sales and looked to ecommerce marketing
automation for the solution.
What she wanted was pretty simple: to have her sales increase on autopilot.
After all, ecommerce store owners are usually busy running every aspect of their store,
and they usually automate as much as they can.
For Christina, first impressions are also very important. Not only does her team spend a
lot of time on designing beautiful clothes—they also focus on giving shoppers a visually-
pleasing experience when they visit Harper Liz.
By approaching the person at the right time with the relevant
information, you create trustworthiness around the brand.
With the interest and orders in the boutique growing, the Harper Liz team knew that they
needed to find a better way to maintain a close relationship with newcomers.
That’s when they decided to set up an automation workflow for their welcome emails.
This would ensure that they could build a strong and long-lasting relationship with the
customers.
And that’s when Harper Liz found Omnisend.
The Omnisend Solution
At first, Christina set up a single email to welcome her new subscribers.
But as she was thinking about her customers’ journeys, she realized that it would be better
to introduce them to the brand over a series of 3 emails.
That way, they have more time to get to know the brand and move toward their first
purchase.
Over the space of one week, Harper Liz’s new subscribers get 3 emails showcasing the
brand and its products.
You can see the automation workflow here:12
Let’s look at the three welcome emails Harper Liz uses for new subscribers:
In the first email, they greet their In the second email, they don’t offer a The last email emphasizes the happiness
subscriber with a great welcome discount but try to get the subscriber that the subscriber is probably missing
image and offer them a nice discount: to start shopping. out on by not shopping at Harper Liz.13 Harper Liz saw some immediate, great results from the welcome email series. The welcome emails have not just great open rates (36%) and click rates (nearly 9%), they also have fantastic sales. The first email still brings in most of the sales ($47,000). However, the 2nd and 3rd in the series has added another 7.5% of sales, or about $3,600. And that’s from just one hour of initial setup. Not only that, but these warm welcome emails have created a stronger bond between the brand and Harper Liz’s engaged subscribers. This has led to greater conversions in all of their marketing automation workflows. In fact, Harper Liz was so impressed with the welcome email series that they’ve started using Omnisend’s cart recovery automation and order confirmation workflows. Looking forward Christina plans to continue improving Harper Liz’s sales results with Omnisend. “As we learn more about our industry and what our customers want, we implement and try new tactics. From the days and times we decide to send an email or an offer, to the series of emails we send after a purchase, we are constantly trying new things to see what works best,” she says. For Christina and Harper Liz Boutique, constant testing to improve the customer experience is the key to their success. “We will continue to do this kind of experimenting in the future to fine tune our tactics to obtain the best results.”
#3 Organic Aromas
15 How Organic Aromas Boosted Newsletter Signups by 150% Overview of Organic Aromas Omnisend worked with Organic Aromas to complete a four-week experiment in building a contact list. With only one hour invested (and zero financial input), this online store captured 661 new leads and ended up with 40 extra orders. Before Omnisend, Organic Aromas had two types of sign up forms: a native Shopify signup form in the footer of the store and a Sumo.me bar at the top of the page. The subscription rate over the seven months previous to the experiment varied between 1.75% and 4.47%, with an average of 3.24%. The store was generating about 264 new leads every month. I would say that this is not bad for a small online store. However, this number could be much better. And this is how we did it. Week 1 – Exit-intent pop up Without looking any further, we set up a Omnisend exit-intent pop up. This appears to the visitor when he/she tends to leave the site. Exit-intent technology is one of the most effective ways to retain customers once they have decided to abandon your website. Learn more about it and find great examples here.
16 For Organic Aromas, this pop up succeeded in generating the highest conversion rate. 19.03% of new subscribers ended up making purchases. Week 2 – Immediate pop up For the second week we chose to experiment with an immediate pop up. This shows up immediately after the visitor begins browsing in your store. This is a controversial pop up. Most people do not like it when something pops up on the screen before they’ve had a chance to see anything. However, this pop up showed stunning results! In one week it captured 135 new subscribers, and 10 of them ended up following through on purchases. A 6.8% conversion from just one pop up! What do you think about it now? Week 3 – Pop up after a number of clicks For the third week of the Omnisend Email Lab, we chose a pop up that appears after a particular number of clicks. According to our experience, three clicks indicate that the visitor is engaged already and might be interested in subscribing to the newsletter.
17
We used the same pop up design and copywriting as before, the only difference was the
settings when the pop up has to appear.
This pop up did not capture so many new signups as the immediate pop up, but it
generated the biggest number of purchases – 17 extra orders in seven days.
Week 4 – Signup Box
The last week was dedicated to the Signup Box. This is the least aggressive signup form
and appears as a widget at the bottom of the page, inviting the visitor to sign up.
No discount code was offered for the signup.
This signup page achieved only a 0.81% subscription rate in comparison to the 3.8% of the
immediate pop up.
Overall results of the experiment
Now that we know what the forms looked like, let’s dig deeper into the overall results.
By adding extra signup forms and experimenting with them, Organic Aromas
#1 increased its new leads from 264 on average to 661. That’s an increase of 150%!
Number of new signups in the last seven months
700
600
500
400
300
200
100
0
March 2016 April 2016 May 2016 June 2016 July 2016 Aug 2016 Sept 2016 Oct 201618
During the 2nd and 3rd weeks the number of new subscribers doubled simply
#2 because of the popups. The chart below illustrates the ratio between regular
signup forms and the newly added Omnisend pop ups.
New vs. regular signup forms performance
100% New subscribers from
footer and Sumo.me
90%
New subscribers from
80% single popup
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
1st week - Exit 2nd week - 3rd week - popup 4th week -
popup immediate popup after 3 clicks Signup Box
Which popup is the best for your store?
It seems that you should use different ones depending on what you want to achieve: an
aggressive immediate pop up for faster list building, or exit-intent and after-few-clicks pop
ups to convince engaged visitors to purchase your products.
1. The last week of the experiment showed that the Signup Box can be used along
with the popups but shouldn’t totally replace them. The small widget can be kept all
year long and be left alone to quietly do its work. However, a significant boost can be
achieved using pop ups with discounts.
2. The time invested in this experiment – only 15 minutes for each form. This means that
only 60 minutes was needed for the the entire month to obtain such great results.
3. Last but not least, as a result of this experiment, you can have a deeper understanding
about your own store and your visitors’ behavior.#4 Net-A-Porter
20
How Net-A-Porter Built an
Online Luxury Empire
Overview of Net-A-Porter
Net-A-Porter is one of the first online-only luxury clothing stores. When they started out,
they had a pretty big challenge: how can they create a luxury brand that is exclusively
online?
After all, luxury brands communicate high quality, exclusivity, and unique appeal. Online
brands (especially in the early 2000s when they launched) seemed very far away from
those qualities.
Net-a-Porter had quite a few important things they wanted to achieve, but for them there
were three crucial things that would allow their brand to really be a leading online luxury
brand:
• to improve sales
• to increase brand loyalty
• to create lasting customer relationships
Net-A-Porter’s challenge
They identified two important challenges to getting what they wanted. First of all, there
was quite a lot of competition online that wanted to position themselves either as luxury
or the best online brand.
Secondly, because of the nature of online shopping, customers tended to bounce around
from one brand to another in trying to find the best deal.
Overcoming that was intimately connected with positioning themselves as luxury, which is
not based on price, but on quality.
The omnichannel solution
While the usual marketing automation would have worked wonders for email, Net-a-Porter
wanted to make sure they achieved their goals efficiently while providing a great customer
experience. That’s why they naturally turned to omnichannel marketing.from one brand to
another in trying to find the best deal.21
First, they set up their approach to include three distinct channels:
• their mobile app/social network to keep customers inside their ecosystem
• email marketing to make sure they follow-up on customer behavior on their store
• ad retargeting to catch visitors who abandoned their site before buying
Perhaps the most famous part of their omnichannel marketing strategy is their mobile
app/social network called The Net Set.
This allows users to interact with each other and share images with each other.
However, the app also recognizes the products being shared, finds the closest match in
Net-A-Porter’s inventory, then recommend it to users so they can buy it. But an overlooked
part of their customer experience strategy is their emails.
Combined with their mobile app and retargeting
ads, Net-A-Porter’s able to provide users with an
always-available experience.
Also, in order to make sure that customers get a
unified experience on all of their channels, they
often send reminder emails or messages in-app
to connect on their other channels.22 Net-A-Porter’s omnichannel results It’s not difficult to see the results of Net-A-Porter’s fantastic omnichannel marketing strategy. In total, as of January this year, Yoox Net-A-Porter had revenues of more than €2.5 billion (more than $3 billion) in 2017 alone, with a 16.9% year-over-year growth. 50% of those sales came from mobile, with the rest comprised of email marketing, retargeting, organic and many other channels. Order values also increased to €328 (or about $400), which is one of the highest for any online store, beating even the likes of Amazon. As Net-a-Porter shows, the omnichannel marketing approach really works, which is why Omnisend is working hard this year to increase the number of channels available for ecommerce marketers to use on our platform.
#5 Mainline Menswear
24 How Mainline Menswear Boosted Traffic for Their Winter Sale Overview of Mainline Menswear Opened online in 2004, Mainline Menswear is a British ecommerce business that is focused on the men’s fashion niche. As with all online retailers, Mainline Menswear found it rather difficult to find footing in the ecommerce space and needed to boost their traffic sales. Two of the most important things for Mainline Menswear were intricately connected, uniquely so for ecommerce stores: traffic and sales. More specifically, they wanted to increase their sales, and one of the best ways to do that is to increase traffic. Of course, they didn’t want to fall into the get-any-traffic trap, where they increase any traffic, just not the ones who actually wanted to buy. They wanted to increase their sales by increasing the amount of actual shoppers who would be more motivated to buy. Mainline Menswear’s challenge Besides the understandable challenge of increasing competition from similar brands around the web, Mainline Menswear also realized they couldn’t really reach their customers like they’d want to. After all, while email marketing boasts some great numbers, it’s also true that everyone is using email marketing. That means all brands are fighting for the same inbox space, and most are losing this battle. This understanding of their main challenge—not necessarily low traffic or low sales, but high competition in the same marketing channel—led them to understand what their solution should be: Omnichannel marketing.
25
The omnichannel solution
Mainline Menswear decided to try to beat their competition by being more creative and
resourceful.
Instead of doing a large, expensive campaign that would get their users’ attention via
inbox, they decided to get their attention by using the thing that nearly all of their ideal
audience had:
Their mobile phones.
For their Winter Sales (Boxing Day 2013), Mainline Menswear decided to move beyond the
standard marketing automation channel and use a combination of coupons/promotions
via SMS, retargeting ads, and cart abandonment emails.
For their Winter Sales (Boxing Day
2013), Mainline Menswear decided to
move beyond the standard marketing
automation channel and use a
combination of coupons/promotions
via SMS, retargeting ads, and cart
abandonment emails.
Instead of using just one great channel
(email), they decided to stack it up with a
few channels.
But they also decided to make it a
seamless campaign, so that users would
have a great, connected experience on all
3 channels.26 Mainline Menswear’s omnichannel results On Boxing Day (December 26) 2013, Mainline Menswear decided to send a sales campaign via SMS, instead of the usual email campaigns they often did. They began to see results immediately. For their Winter 2013 Sales campaign, Mainline Menswear saw: • a 45% increase in direct traffic • a 27% rise in overall traffic • an amazing 93% boost in their mobile traffic Their sales also increased significantly, with their campaign having led to one of the busiest days in Mainline Menswear’s entire history. This because the rise in quality traffic allowed their email marketing and retargeting to kick into high gear. Not only that, but utilizing the omnichannel approach lowered the average customer acquisition cost, and it’s an approach they’ve utilized repeatedly since. Why omnichannel is unbeatable Using omnichannel, you get to provide users, shoppers and customers with a unified experience. This not only leads to better user engagement, but also (as you can see from the above case studies) better sales and brand awareness. Omnichannel marketing will allow you to: • Seamlessly integrate different channels • Provide users with a unified experience • More easily control all your channels • Improve your ROI • Increase brand awareness • Build a long-term, sustainable business In short, omnichannel marketing will allow you to take your online store from a good business to a powerful, sales-driven business that can establish and grow its customer base consistently.
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